Canva Insider Tips

Have you used Canva yet? If not, it’s time to jump in. All entrepreneurs need graphics for one thing or another no matter how “techy” you are. From business cards to flyers and even video, Canva has it all. I like to tell people it’s sort of like Graphics for Dummies. While I have official training on the major graphics programs, there’s no reason to not use Canva for most of what I do. It’s quick, easy, and high quality. This month on social media, I shared some of my favorite little nuances that make Canva so amazing. Here’s a wrap-up below.

Brand Kits

Before you get started on Canva, I suggest you set up your brand using the brand kit. This is only available to paid Canva accounts. If you don’t have a paid account, get a free trial and test these things out to see if it would be worth it for you. It’s minimal money at $12 per month for maximum results on your branding.

Keeping a consistent look to your brand is really important to your message. Your brand is made up of your color palette, fonts, logos and any other specific "elements" that you might think of. The "Brand Kit" and "Styles" are probably my #1 if not #2 reason to pay for Canva Pro. By setting up a Brand Kit, you are adding in your colors, logos, and fonts for Canva to have pre-programmed for you. The beauty of this is that you can now adapt any template to your specific branding.

Templates

Canva has templates for nearly any industry or type of marketing you need. From T-shirts to flyers, to social media posts and even video. Using templates can go a long way to keeping your brand looking consistent and professional- even if you are NOT a graphic designer by trade. If you want to use their templates, they have a quick video on how to do it.

Now, here comes the fun part. You created your Brand Kit and found a template that you like for a post. When you are in that template, you can now click on the STYLES button in the menu and with a few clicks, you can apply your brand coloring and fonts. Then, you can scroll down to LOGOS and add your logo. Bam! An excellent branded piece of marketing is ready to share with the world.

Creating Videos

Video is king on social media and will only continue to become more important for marketers and entrepreneurs to know how to use it effectively. All of the platforms have admitted to giving more reach to posts with video. Even if you aren’t comfortable with streaming or creating videos of yourself, you can really easily create a simple graphic and just animate it in Canva. Just that is enough to make the platforms count it as video and give it more love. Here’s a quick and easy way to do it.

And, if you want to get a little fancier with your “videos,” there are some templates that you can play with and test out that are specific to video. With a little trial and error, you will find yourself to be looking like a video pro in no time.

OK. So, now that you have these amazing graphics and videos, how do you get them out to the world? There are some newer features in Canva that can help you out with that. Not only can you do amazing graphics and video but you can schedule them to your social media posts from right inside the Canva app. No more downloading and re-uploading. You do need to have the paid version of Canva to do this but if you already have the paid or if you don't have an agency scheduling program, it's quite a perk. Read more about how it works here: SCHEDULING POSTS IN CANVA.

One other thing that I just found this week is the ability to send your graphic to various other apps you might work with. I personally use Mailchimp quite a bit. Instead of downloading your graphics and then uploading them to Mailchimp to use in your email designs, you can now send them directly to your Mailchimp account. This is a great time saver and helps keep your disc drive clean.

Those are my favorite features in Canva that make it so worthwhile but I could do blog after blog on how wonderful it is. Do you use Canva? If not and you try it, let me know what you think. And, to make it even more fun to play with Canva, here's a link to get a FREE set of Canva templates with a Monday Motivational quote you can personalize and share.

Rebecca Paciorek is an Online Business Manager specializing in assisting in the growth of your business through traditional and digital means.

*I often recommend products and services that I use or that have been recommended to me by people we trust. In many cases these recommendations are accompanied by an affiliate link, which provides me with a referral commission should you click through and make a purchase.